Geadered Discourse and Subjectiviîy in Travel Writing by Canadian

245 Pages·2000·16.2 MB·English

Geadered Discourse and Subjectiviîy
in Travel Writing by Canadian Women
Denise Adele Heaps
A tbesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctomte
Graduate Department of English
University of Toronto
O Copyright by Denise Adele Heaps, 2ûûû
National Library Bibliothèque nationale
du Canada
Acquisitions and Acquisitions et
Bibliographie Services services bibliographiques
395 Weilicigtm Street 395. rue Wdlirrgtori
Ottawa ON K1A ON4 OrtawaON K1AW
Canada CaMda
The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non
exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant à la
National Library of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de
reproduce, loan, distribute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou
copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous
paper or electronic formats. la fome de microfiche/film, de
reproduction sur papier ou sur format
électronique.
The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du
copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse.
thesis nor substantial extracts fiorn it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels
may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés
reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son
permission. autorisation.
ABSTRACT
DENISE ADELE HEAPS
Ph.D 2000
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO GRADUATE STUDlES
Gendrred Discourse and Subjectivity in
Tnvel Writing by Canadian Women
The subject of this dissertation - non-fictionai travel writing by Canadian women
- has ken thrice marginaiized by scholarly criticism. As an interdisciplinary genre that
is difficult to categorize. travel writing was long excluded fiom litemy analysis. In time,
some renegade critics turned their attention to travel writing, pointing out the genre's
value as an aesthetic. historical, culturai. and autobiographicai document. However,
since they tended to ignore its significance as a gendered document, they articulated a
gender-blind tradition of the genre that either excluded women travel witers or glossed
over the gender-related difference of their texts. In response, feminist critics began
identifjring a distinct tradition of women's travel writing. However, they usually limited
their analysis to nineteenth-century texts. thereby excluding travel writing by Canadian
women, which is largely a twentieth-century product. Thus, travel writing by Canadian
women has ken marginalized on the level of genre, gender, and nation. This dissertation
works on and through these levels in an effort to achieve a comprehensive, contextualized
analysis of Canadian women's travel witing.
Since travel and travel writing are thoroughly gender-inflected cultural practices.
a substantial portion of the female uavel writer's subjectivity is constructed by gendered
discourse. In Canadian women's travel wnting. wornan-identifieci, ferninine, and
feminist discourses pervade the travel writers' inscriptions of their subjectivity.
Chapter One of this study explores one manifestation of this gendered subjectivity: the
feminist ethnographie discourse in texts by Margaret MacLean, Agnes Deans Carneron.
Karen Comelly, and Bronwyn Drainie. In Chapter Two, travel books by Bharati
Mukherkee, Daphne Marlatt, Rona Murray, and Myma Kostash are analyseci as feminine
matrocentric discourses, wherein each author retrieves matemal mernories and messages
as she retums to an ancestral homeland. The travel books exarnined in Chapter Three are
composed by incorporated travelling wives: women who accompany their husbands on
their work-related joumeys. In texts by EIla Manning, Philomena Orford, P.K. Page,
Margaret Laurence, and Carlotta Hac ker, we find feminine discourses of domestic
support or public assistance in a husband's career, as well as feminist discourses of
resistance to this incorporation and discourses of self -ful filling travel expenences be yond
wifely incorporation.
Table of Contents
Introduction: . . . . . . Gendered Discourse and Subjectivity in
Travel Writing by Canadian Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -1-34
Chapfer One: . . . . . . Feminist Ethnographie Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35-88
Clrapfer Two: . . . . . . Travelling Daughters and Materna1 Messages . . . . . . . . 89-1 59
Chapter Three: . . . . .T ravelling Wives' Tales . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . - . . 160-2 17
. Chapter Fouc . . . . . Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 8-223
WorksConsulted: .................................................. 224-240
Introduction:
Gendereà Discourse and Subjectiviîy
in Travel Writing by Canadian Women
The theory of women's travel writing articulated in this analysis evolves out of a
persona1 register, that king my own experiences of travel, of writing travel. and of
reading travel. When returning to Japan through the journal 1 wrote while residing and
teaching there, 1 am fascinated by the subjectivity 1 fmd inscribed- Teresa de Lauretis
defines subjectivity as "patterns by which experiential and emotional contents. feelings.
images. and memories are organized to form one's self-image. one's sense of self and
others. and of out possibilities of existence" (5). My subjectivity betrayed, among other
things. my culturally-disonented consciousness: "1 feel as though 1 am hanging upside-
down in suction-cupped shoes and wonder, if 1 remove my shoes to enter Japan, as is
custom here, will 1 fdl downwards into the sky?" This question presented itself several
weeks after my arrival as the last train of the evening shunted me fiom central Tokyo to
my new apurtu in the suburb of Suginami Ku.
The most salient. compelling feature of my Japan journal. however, is the
pervasiveness of a gendered subjectivity. By this 1 mean my experience travelling as a
woman as well as my interest in the experiences of the women fiom my host culture and
how notions of gender shape our lives. The terrn 'gender' as 1 use it here and throughout
this study refers to the social, political, and cultural meanings grafied ont0 biological sex.
an interpretation inforrned by feminist poststructwalist theorists such as Chris Weedon.
In Feminist Practice and Poststmcturalisr Theory, Weedon views gender as a product of
discourse: ways of thinking and king in the world that circulate through language. and
that seek to govem the conscious and unconscious mind and emotional life of their
subjects (Weedon 1 OS). Subjectivity is conveyed through discourse, but it is also
sculpted by discourse. The discourses of gender of which Weedon speaks have
influenced women's subjectivity - their sense of themselves as women as well as their
possi bi hies of existence as women - for centuries.'
In my Japan journal, 1 wrote of my curiosity about Japanese women and the
gendered contours of their lives, and rny text incorporates the voices of female fnends
and students. like Yoko, a cornputer engineer, and Miss Takeuchi, a secretary, both of
whom were young, working, single women like myself. Unlike myself. my fiends
anticipated the day when they would marry, quit their jobs. and become fU11-time
homemakers, wives, and mothers, a normative cycle in a Japanese woman's life during
the time of my sojourn. Moreover, my journal contains sketches of women 1 saw. yet
who remained voiceless and unknown to me: the preoccupied housewives whimng by on
bicycles on their way to market, the hunched-over e!deriy women in public baths
scrubbing each other' s backs, the ubiquitous milk-toothed poster-girls who adomed banks
and telephone booths, and the child star of the pom flick "Littie Lips," who splayed her
gartered legs to my gaze in a subway poster. My gendered subjectivity also manifested
itself in lengthy considerations of my reception in Japan as a young, gaoin (foreign)
woman. In pants, cornfortable shues, and short haïr, 1 was received as a stereotype of the
liberated Western wornan. which apparently co~oteda y eaming for promiscuous casual
sex. To my initial astonishment. efforts at tolerant amusement, and ultimate distress. this
sanctioned improper propositions and questions, myriad subway gropings. and even more
invasive 'hands-on' experiences by Japanese men as well as by the gaijin men 1 met who
revelled in the testosterone-charged atmosphere of Japan. Interestingly, these were
frequently the same gaijin who objected to my gendered critiques of Japan. ïhey self-
righteously tossed out terms like cultural relativism and the politics of representation of
cultural others - important concepts 1 myself was struggling with in a way my gaijin male
counterparts could avoid.
With my Japan journal in rnind, 1 began reading non-fictional, book-length,
English-language travel accounts by other Canadian women to see if, to what degree. and
in what ways the inscribed subjectivities were inflected by gender. In fanning out fiom
my own experiences and writings to those of other wornen, I am directed by feminist
cultural cri tic Elspeth Probyn. In Sexing the Sev Gendered Positions in Cuitural
Sltidies. Probyn reinstalls the critical methodology of personal experience in feminist
studies. making the "very basic point" that the "expenential is part of the cntical
enterprise itself," that it is necessarily "imbricated within a critical stance," and that the
feminist critic is "directed by and to the experience of king gendered" (23). It is with
Probyn in mind that I commence this study of Canadian women's travel writing with a
"discursive striptease" (1 2), with a description of my experience travelling and travel
writing. However, 1 offer my story not as an authoritative account of the travel-writing
woman, but as a segue into a broader analysis. My desire is to engage a methodology
that "stretch[es] my experience beyond the merely personal, not as a way of
transcendence but as a way of reaching her experiences, the expenences and selves of
women" (Probyn 4).
Feminist critic Nancy Miller would identiQ my reading practice as a "gender-
marked" approach to genre, signiming a "cornmitment to decipher what women have said
(or more important, lefi unsaid) about the pattern of their lives" through various genres
(56-57). In his editoriaf for Granta's immensely popular 1984 issue on travel writing, Bill
Buford defines the genre as "pre-eminently a narrative told in the first person,
authenticated by lived experience" (7). Apparently, Buford also views the genre as pre-
erninently scribed by men judging fiom his selection ratio of fifieen male authors to two
female authors. one of whom - Jan Moms - was formerly James. In her introduction to
the anthology Wifhout a Guide: Contempormy Women S Travel Aalentures. Canadian
writer Katherine Govier balks at Buford's selection for Granta's 199 1 %est of' travel
issue, where the ratio of male-to-female authors has increased to 2 1: 2. She asks, "1s
travel writing the 1stb astion of macho journalists?" (xiii). While 1 applaud Govier's
question and its provocatory tone - Buford's editorial decisions may indeed be a last-
ditch effort to grab masculine literary temtory - 1 frame rny questions sornewhat
differently. 1 wonder if his critena for inclusion and exclusion are detennined (and
limited) by a conception of travel writing based on masculine models of the genre. Does
the gender blindness he exhibits in his selection process extend to his ability to read
women's travel texts? Since, as we shall see, women's travel writing departs in
signif icant way s from a universal ized and normalized masculine tradition, does Buford
know how to read and value the difference of women's travel writing?
We fmd difference at the very beginning of women's participation in travel and its
textualization. Buford defines the gente by its autobiographical components, as a first-
person narrative authenticated by Iived experience (7). Historically, however, women
have been excluded fiom living that experience and, since the g e m is predicated on the
journey taken, fkom writing it. These exclusions were sustained by age-oId ideologies of
gender exemplified by the archetypal figures of wandering Odysseus and waiting
Penelope. By the late nineteenth century, as discursive constraints on women's travel
loosened. unprecedented nurnbers of white. Western. middle-to-upper class women
travelled abroad, many of them alone or with femde companions. for the first time in
history (Frawley 2 1; R ussell 23-24; Stevenson 2). Canadian women began sailing seas
and meandering though unfamiliar cities, countries, and continents (Kroller 74).
Continuing into the twentieth century, women's experiences of travel presented new ways
of being in the world. As they literally moved across geographies, their subject positions
- their notions of "Where 1 stand (Fuss 29) - shified figuratively. Some, for example.
assumed the subject position of travel writer by using their travel experience as what
Mary Suzanne Schriber depicts as a "passport to the hitherto predominantly masculine
domain of the travel book" (Telling Travels xxi).
Women entered this domain with metaphorical passport in hand, which they
starnped themselves with gender-specific marks reflecting their experiences of travel and
writing as women. As I began reading book-length accounts of travel by Canadian
women, the earliest of which were published in the last decade of the nineteenth centwy,
I was taken by the prominence of gendered discourses that went into each author's
representation of her subjectivity. So many of their discourses were 'woman-identified'
in that they were about women encountered en route and about the writers themselves as
women travelling through gendered spaces in a femde body. Some of these gendered
discourses were feminine in that they conformed to traditional, socially constructed
definitions of womanhood. Others were feminist in that they incorporated a politics of
change and resistance to the less palatable, more constricting features of femininity, and
because they articulated a desire for self-fùlfillment within the context of patnarchal
cultural constraints."
One reason gendered discourses are so pronounced in representations of the travel
writing woman's subjectivity - more so, I would argue. than other autobiographical
genres - is because women's travel was construed as transgressive by ideologies of
gender for so long. This limitation on women's travel has had ramifications for women
writers of travel. It produced women travellers who were and, in some environrnents.
still are made to feel extremely aware of the gendered implications of their sex.
Moreover. as women cross cultures. they are ofien forced to negotiate different
constructions of female status and propriety in their host culture. which also foments
gendered self-reflexivity. Since the travel text is predicated and shaped by the travel
expenence, this gendered consciousness finds its way into their discourse. Such gendered
consciousness is seldom expressed in men's travel writing. As Peter Middleton notes in
The Inwurd Gaze: Mascuhity and Subjecfivify in Modern Culrure, because many men do
not know they even have a gender, perceiving themselves first and foremost as human,
gendered self-reflexivity is minimal in their representations of subjectivity (1 1).
Psychologicaily and physically unshackled by constraining ideological discourses of
gender. men have viewed the privilege of travei as tacit. as a personal prerogative. as a
possibility of their human existence. Thus. the fact of their gender and its cultural
resonances are rarely underscored in their travel accounts.
The historical restrictions on women's travel have also had ramifications for
readers of women's travel writing. Women-identified, ferninine, and feminist discourses
are novel in a genre where gendered discourses are traditionally, normatively masculine.
Middleton writes. "Mostly men's culture is simply assumed to be universal culture.
men's issues simply human issues" (5 1). In light of Buford's selections for Granfa' s
travel issues, 1 would add that 'mostly men's' travel writing has been simply assumed to
be travel writing, which is an erroneous assumption indeed. Perusing Buford's selections,
I found numerous male subjectivities conveyed ùirough hyper-masculine discourses
about death-defying travels through war-tom coutries. coups. and extreme landscapes.
As wetl. I found texts berefi of self-reflexive gendered subjectivity, which is also a
masculine discourse of sorts in the thoroughly gender-inflected context of travel and its
inscription. Middleton generaliy argues that men's subjectivity is gendered by discourses